There has heretofore been a stereoscopic image display device including: a light source unit configured to form a predetermined light emitting pattern including a pattern in which light emitting parts are discretely formed and the light emitting parts and non-light emitting parts are alternately arranged in a horizontal direction; and a light emitting pattern conversion unit configured to form a secondary light emitting pattern by converting the light emitting pattern of the light source unit (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-206456).
The stereoscopic image display device further includes a display device configured to display a stripe composite image formed by dividing parallax images into a large number of stripe pixel arrays and arranging the stripe pixel arrays in a predetermined order.
The stereoscopic image display device is configured to modulate light from the secondary light emitting pattern by the stripe composite image displayed on the display device, and to guide the modulated light to predetermined regions according to the viewpoints of the modulation, thereby allowing an observer to recognize a stereoscopic image.
The stereoscopic image display device further includes a microoptical element including: a vertical cylindrical lens array (vertical lenticular lens) formed by arranging a large number of cylindrical lenses in a horizontal direction, each cylindrical lens being elongated in a vertical direction and having optical power in the horizontal direction; and a horizontal cylindrical lens array (horizontal lenticular lens) formed by arranging a large number of cylindrical lenses in the horizontal direction, each cylindrical lens being elongated in the horizontal direction and having optical power in the vertical direction.
As to the microoptical element in which the vertical lenticular lens and the horizontal lenticular lens are overlapped as in the conventional stereoscopic image display device, the two lenticular lenses have different preferred viewing distances. Thus, there is a possibility that a clear image may not be obtained due to image blurring.